1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a data processing apparatus and a method thereof, and more particularly, to a data processing apparatus configured to prompt a user to read information provided for the user and a method thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
A conventional information management system transmits information, e.g., documents, to a client terminal from an information management server via a network and notifies the information to a user of the client terminal. For example, the information management system uses an e-mail as a method for notifying a newly registered document to a user. With the information management system using an e-mail, a sender can use a message disposition notification function of an e-mail application so as to confirm whether a recipient has acknowledged the transmitted e-mail.
However, in an information management system using a method for notifying a newly registered document by an e-mail, a recipient may not notice the e-mail. Thus, the recipient does not necessarily read the notified document.
Therefore, if an e-mail for notifying the message disposition confirmation has not arrived yet, the sender may re-transmit the same e-mail or transmit an e-mail to prompt the recipient to read the document. This imposes a high burden on the sender. Further, the recipient may not read the newly registered document even when the sender transmits these mails.
In this regard, numerous methods have been proposed for prompting reading of an unread document. For instance, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-334428 discusses a method for notifying information managed in an information managing system to a user, who is expected to read the information, in real time using an instant message.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 3-44230 discusses a method for forcibly outputting an unread document in order to notify the unread document and secure a storage capacity of a server.
Also, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 3-44239 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 3-44240 discuss a method in which a print server issues a reception list of facsimiles stored on a print server to a user who has logged in so as to notify reception of a facsimile document.
However, the conventional methods discussed in the above-described documents only notify an unread document or print a list of unread documents or the unread document itself. In such a case, there is a possibility that a user who is expected to read the unread document may not notice the document.
Thus, the aforementioned conventional methods have a problem that information, such as documents, expected to be read by a user may remain unread by the user.